D&D General 5.5 and making the game easier for players and harder for DMs

[Micah Sweet]

Almost every D&D alternative/hopeful/clone goes for some variant of rules-lite approach. To the point where I'm actively wishing for at least SOMEONE not going that approach. If that's what floats your boat, there are DOZENS of games to choose from, is what I'm trying to say.

But 5E is not my idea of a rules-bloated game. If you call 5E complex or bloated, I'm thinking "maybe this person hasn't experienced a lot of games..." There are several (mainly older) games that truly deserve being called bloated, complex, byzantine or even outright incomprehensible, but in my opinion no version of D&D has ever been close.

5E is easily lighter faster and easier to run than any other edition of D&D since, I dunno, all the way back to early AD&D, before all the splat books. And even then, 5E is still easier if not lighter or faster, because back in the day, people just didn't know how to write clear rules. Sure there's a minority that would disagree, but that's because as old grognards they severely underestimate the benefits of streamlined easy-to-remember modern rules: just because they once as teenagers mastered the AD&D rules doesn't mean a modern gamer would like to touch it with a ten-foot pole.

I would very much like WotC to have fun with their property. They could release a OSR-ified variant version of the 5E rules, where you for once get closer to OSR and away from the "high heroics" of mainstream D&D, without also reducing the game complexity.

Because Gasik isn't alone in feeling that all the "rules-lite" games out there are just missing something. Something that's been central to the D&D experience for many decades: the minigame of building your character. Just having AC, HP, a sword and a lantern is of course enough to personify a character, but it is kind of a meager charbuild experience.

Level Up explicitly does not use a lighter approach. It's called Advanced 5e for a reason.

 

[FitzTheRuke]

Could be an age and/or cultural thing perhaps? I'm based in a town in England and the AL club requires under 16s to be accompanied with a guardian. Likewise the other large club I'm involved with is part of the university, so is already selecting for a certain level of maturity.

The only times that I've seen player behaviour like that described by you, Bloodtide, Overgeeked etc is from when I was at school (and playing Basic and 1e AD&D, but I doubt that the edition had anything to do with it.)

I've run games at my FLGS for 30 years, and I've seen a tiny handful of problematic players over the years. I've never had a problem teaching them to behave. They've all either learned to Play Nice with Others or they've left of their own accord. Some of them went on to be good players. Often, they leave. NEVER have I had them stay and disrupt the game, and the vast VAST majority of players are casual and there to have a good time with others, in good faith.

 

[Umbran]

Because the government controlling what people can or should do is never abused or harmful.

Not moving this into the realm of politics, but let's just say you can't legislate morality, ethics, or restraint.

And dropped per mod note

Mod Note:
So, I suspect you wrote this before seeing the moderation.

But, even so, the post was ill-advised. Next time, don't try to get the parting shot, please.

 

[Chaosmancer]

In our very first 5E game, we look at point buy and decided the ability scores didn't give enough power for the type of game the DM wanted. So we decided to use the old point buy from 3.5 with the heroic 32 point buy where you can have up to an 18 before racial mods at level 1. So I built a PC with nothing below a 10.

After the campaign was over we agreed to never do that again. The PCs felt too much like Mary/Marty Stus with no flaws to play off of. It's a myth with no backing that the majority of people just want overpowered PCs. Those people certainly exist, but it's a small percentage of the general population and I suspect even for many of those it would quickly get boring.

Our current game with my Trickery Domain cleric, the DM insisted we roll for stats. Most of us rolled nothing lower than a 12, the person playing the princess whose kingdom we are trying to save rolled two 18's.

That same princess is rage-filled, grieving and impulsive. She has often rushed into fights against her enemies dragging the rest of us into additional conflicts. She has made a deal with a mysterious dark entity, and most visions of the future we have been given have the "bad end" not be that the BBEG wins, but that the princess turns into a bloodthirsty tyrant who has given into her rage and begins ruling with an iron fist.

Somehow, despite having incredibly high stats.... none of our characters seem to lack flaws to play off of. My cleric whose lowest score is a 12 Charisma is indecisive, a bit self-loathing, and is struggling to be the moral compass of the party, since he is the faith leader of the group. I don't know the other people's scores by heart, but... well everywhere I look in that game, I have to wonder why people think that characters with high stats have no flaws. We are ripe with flaws. And this game is also the one where we have nearly TPK'd multiple times, despite supposedly being incredibly overpowered mary/marty sue/stu's with no flaws.

 

[Chaosmancer]

5th edition definitely doesn't work well with scores above point buy. So your experiences are spot on.

My friend was in another game, and when a Barbarian rolled excellent scores he later asked the DM to voluntarily reduce his scores. A Barbarian with 16s and 18s in all three of Strength, Constitution, and Dexterity becomes quite literally too good. He felt he outshone his fellow party members to such a degree it reduced the game fun.

My Barbarian in the discord game I'm in has a 16/14/16/10/10. I often feel like the weakest and least effective member of the party. I doubt that making that an 18/16/16/12/12 would alter that fact.

 

[Oofta]

Our current game with my Trickery Domain cleric, the DM insisted we roll for stats. Most of us rolled nothing lower than a 12, the person playing the princess whose kingdom we are trying to save rolled two 18's.

That same princess is rage-filled, grieving and impulsive. She has often rushed into fights against her enemies dragging the rest of us into additional conflicts. She has made a deal with a mysterious dark entity, and most visions of the future we have been given have the "bad end" not be that the BBEG wins, but that the princess turns into a bloodthirsty tyrant who has given into her rage and begins ruling with an iron fist.

Somehow, despite having incredibly high stats.... none of our characters seem to lack flaws to play off of. My cleric whose lowest score is a 12 Charisma is indecisive, a bit self-loathing, and is struggling to be the moral compass of the party, since he is the faith leader of the group. I don't know the other people's scores by heart, but... well everywhere I look in that game, I have to wonder why people think that characters with high stats have no flaws. We are ripe with flaws. And this game is also the one where we have nearly TPK'd multiple times, despite supposedly being incredibly overpowered mary/marty sue/stu's with no flaws.

We all have different preferences. I've been at tables where we rolled and one character had multiple 18s, nothing below a 12. Another had a single 14 and most stats below 10. No thanks. I won't play at a table, unless it's a one shot, where we roll. You do you.

 

[bloodtide]

Could be an age and/or cultural thing perhaps? I'm based in a town in England and the AL club requires under 16s to be accompanied with a guardian. Likewise the other large club I'm involved with is part of the university, so is already selecting for a certain level of maturity.

The only times that I've seen player behaviour like that described by you, Bloodtide, Overgeeked etc is from when I was at school (and playing Basic and 1e AD&D, but I doubt that the edition had anything to do with it.)

Age? Well, I find most such players to be 18-30. Culture? Is Suburbanite a culture? They are the type that grew up playing sports with no scores kept and everyone always won.

To do some analysis, I'd say the real thing, is what the person has going on in lie. By that I mean good, well rounded, active, open, sociable parts of the community. Or more simply people that have good lives outside of the game. The problem players tend to not have that....and in fact the game is their only outlet for good fun.

No Tetrasodium, I'm asking if you have noticed a correlation between the immature player behaviour you keep on describing, and immature players.

I would say no. A person can be immature at any age. Last week end I had a 32 year old crying as I would not tell him the name of a monster they encountered in a 5E game. Through his tears he kept saying how he could not "make an informed decision" unless he knew the monsters name. As of this typing...he still does not know.

 

[Chaosmancer]

We all have different preferences. I've been at tables where we rolled and one character had multiple 18s, nothing below a 12. Another had a single 14 and most stats below 10. No thanks. I won't play at a table, unless it's a one shot, where we roll. You do you.

Sure, I despise that sort of disparity. That didn't happen in this game. We all rolled incredibly good stats. Even the DM was laughing in disbelief.

I also generally hate rolling, because it creates that disparity.

My actual point though was, we have a table full of people with God Stats... and we have nearly TPK'd multiple times and if you accused any of our characters of having no flaws, the table would laugh you out of the room. We have a multitude of flaws and are a hot mess. I understand it is clearly a table difference, but I think it is worth noting that everyone in the party having high stats... is fine. Doesn't really make the game harder to DM nor does it leave the characters without flaws.

 

[cbwjm]

In my current game I let everyone roll for ability scores, and in the last game I played in, we were allowed to roll as well. I haven't seen any problem in either game- we still fail rolls and characters go down (one even died twice in the last game, while our Ranger in the last game spent as much time dying as acting, lol). An extra +1 here and there doesn't really seem to be making a large impact.

I don't know why our play experiences are so different, though I will admit, our last game (Scarlet Citadel by Kobold Press) has some pretty rough fights. As for my own game, I've avoided many deadly fights, but I almost lost a character to a medium encounter!

The first person to die in one game I played in was someone with "god stats". My friends and I all seem to like rolling for stats and it never really seems to be as unbalanced as people seem to think it is.

 

[Cap'n Kobold]

I wouldn't say that " @Cap'n Kobold " counts as "the rest of us". This particular point seems to be a matter of "it's a vanishingly small group of players getting massively outsized focus from wotc that impacts every other group" against "butbutbut it's bigger than you think... silent majority" and if I'm generous in including posters who could fall under "the rest of us" + @Cap'n Kobold I'm pretty sure it would barely add up to an even set of teams with the list you put together in 406.

In my personal experience such problem players are very rare as adults, and this seems to be borne out by the people posting on the forums as well. There are maybe four posters who regularly post about how dysfunctional their players/groups are, and most of the other posters seem to regard this as unusual as well. Other sources of media seem to back up this concept that most D&D groups get along fairly well together and don't have people ragequitting on a regular basis.
Hence why I stated my opinion that this behaviour is quite rare, and why I was curious as to whether there was a common factor between those problem players that could be isolated.

If you are particularly invested in "disproving" my opinion and can word it in a suitably neutral fashion, feel free to start a poll.

Your belief that it is" a vanishingly small group of players getting massively outsized focus from wotc that impacts every other group" is interesting though. What is the demographic that is being targeted here, and why would a company decide to market to such a small slice of their customers rather than go for the more widespread appeal that 5e is known for? As a corporate entity, they will have reasonably decent marketing demographic analysis, so they will likely be aware of what they are doing, so why would they choose to?

As to the rest of your efforts to dig & pin blame on the GM

No, there is no blame being pinned, other than on the problem players themselves. I don't regard them as victims of "hoodwinking" because I was able to understand what that media was getting at and it didn't turn me into a problem player. Frankly I do not think most DMs would be capable of actually turning normal players into such problem players even if they tried.

or anyone but that vanishingly small slice of players who bought into stormwind elevated play acting I don't believe you've made a case for it as anything

What is the connection between the Stormwind fallacy (optimisation is not mutually exclusive with roleplaying) and play acting? I understand it can be a way of getting into character or distinguishing the character's speech from the players, but play acting is not required for roleplaying, and nothing to do with the Stormwind fallacy.

but that and do not find it reasonable for wotc to pin responsibility for the consequences of 5e's removal of risk as a driving factor in PC natural selection & evolution (PC death & adaptation).

Not sure what I can tell you there. I've seen more deaths in my 5e games than my BECMI ones.
The thought that PC death should be regarded as driven by natural selection and evolution is a little weird though: Generally PCs dies from either a string of bad luck or bad decisions. Is the idea that after having their character die, a player will create one that is more optimised and less likely to die again?